


you've shown me what love can feel like

by inamamagic



Category: All For One (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 14:25:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14107317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inamamagic/pseuds/inamamagic
Summary: Henry learns about love at Portia's hands (stops before S2E6).





	you've shown me what love can feel like

**Author's Note:**

> The general timeline for this is pre-season 1, all of season 1, until just before the big reveal in S2E6 (and the fallout).

Dating Portia made Henry feel like he was on top of the world.

Contrary to popular belief, he hadn’t joined Mu Sigma Theta just because Portia had. He’s a feminist, plain and simple, and when he’d heard about the house’s ethos, all he’d thought was, _sign me up_. 

Getting in had been a surprise, to say the least, but what had been even more surprising was Portia liking him back when he’d been certain that he was the only one going mad with pining for her. Portia with her luscious curls and pretty eyes and heart stopping smile.

Being with Portia made him feel infinite. Powerful almost. Invincible. With his hand in hers, the world was at his fingertips. Making her laugh was like winning the lottery - even better because at least he didn’t have to pay taxes on her smile. 

He’d felt like he was at the top of the world, like he could do anything. A single look was enough to set him on fire, making him skyrocket with the force of it.

Nothing he’d thought love was about could even compare to the reality of it. Portia was all bright colours and sunshine and Disney goodness collapsed into a single, tangible human, and she made him want to try. Try to be less cynical and see the world through her eyes from time to time. She made him smile so much that his cheeks constantly ached through the first couple of weeks of dating. The more he smiled, the less angry he felt, and the less angry he felt, the more inclined he was to hope.

Because loving Portia made him hope. It made him think that things could be better perhaps, if he tried a little harder and smiled a little more. The formula worked, for a while. He could comfort himself with the idea that as long as he had his hand in hers, everything would go perfectly.

The idealism popped as bubbles are prone to do, leaving him clouded in cold disappointment. This didn’t diminish his feelings for her, but it did drag him back to where he was, slowly slowly, so gradually that neither one of them saw it coming. One minute she was his world. The next, he was taking her for granted.

When she broke up with him, everything he’d built around himself shattered. He’d looked at the pieces left behind in the crash and remembered thinking, _how the fuck am I going to rebuild now_?

***

Being Portia’s friend is the hardest thing he’s ever done.

It’s ironic, he thinks, because it’s the thing he’d most hoped for after the breakup. Losing her had been unbearable. The thought that it might be forever, even more so. 

Being her friend takes strength he didn’t think he’d have. He knows she has more than every right to never speak to him again, even more than with Dorothy and the others. They were just her friends, but he was supposed to have her back in a way the others didn’t. They were supposed to be in it together, the two of them versus the world. He wasn’t supposed to pick up a shard of glass off the ground and drag it down through her back along with everyone else.

The relief at her forgiving him is quickly overtaken by a pervasive sense of apprehension that grows by the day. Even when she sticks by his side during his transition, even when she asks him to become her running-mate, he can’t shake off the feeling that something’s going to go wrong, and that he’s hurtling towards this thing at a speed too fast to process. Every day is an effort. It’s tough. Sometimes, when Henry says something that’s an inch too close to the boundaries he’s drawn around himself, he notices the way she grows cold and lashes back at him.

He did that to her, he knows that. He’s the reason why she’s always on the defence now, always watching her back like she’s afraid he’ll stab it again. He can’t blame her, even though it’s growing increasingly hard to shoulder everything.

But loving Portia through all this? Easy. 

Being her friend forces him to drag love deep from within himself and give it to her. It was something he’d never thought he’d be able to do, least of all because he didn’t think he had enough love left to give anyone after his heart had all but shrivelled into nothing worth touching. 

He should’ve known that he could do anything for her, even love her in a way he thought he never could.

So he stays through the stress, the tension, the endless waiting for the string to snap and for her to cut him out again. Staying is good, because on most days, they’re good. And if they’re good on most days, that means progress. And progress is always a good thing.

***

Leaving Portia is excruciating.

At first, he’d been right there with everyone in thinking it was just a fight, but when he doesn’t cool off after the sixth hour following their blowup, he knows there’s something worse going on.

He calls Alex. She’s the only one that makes any sense nowadays. She sits and listens to him vent for nearly an hour, and she pats him on the arm and tells him to take some time for himself and to figure things out from there.

But twelve hours turns into sixteen, then eighteen, and then twenty four, and the more time Henry takes for himself, the more he realises he needs even more of it away from Portia.

He hadn’t gotten time to get over her after the breakup - they’d been pushed back together for the mission before he’d jumped the gun and tried to restart their friendship. He hadn’t realised that he’d just ignored all his old wounds instead of healing them, and the pain of all of them reopening is too much to bear.

The feelings that crowd his mind are too complicated to make sense of. He doesn’t know how much time he’ll need away, but he knows it’ll be more than a few days.

_Put yourself first_ , Alex had told him. It’s what Portia had taught him too, even though she doesn’t know it. She’d showed him the importance of loving yourself and putting yourself first. She’d done it when she’d left him for the first time, and even though it hurt him to think about it, he knew that every time she stood up for himself and demanded that she be taken seriously was a result of her prioritising herself. 

He hadn’t considered that there’d come a day when he’d have to stand up for himself against her.

He knows she’s still hurt, and he completely understands and accepts the fact that she gets to be. But he knows he can’t deal with constantly being reminded of what he did. Every time she pulls him back there, he feels all his hard work unravelling. Restitching the fabric of his amends is growing tiring. If she’s going to forgive him, he reasons she’ll just have to do it away from him.

It’s time for him to take time for himself. Time for him to love himself for once. Whatever happens with her will happen - and only time will tell whether that’s good or bad.

Loving himself is going to be difficult. But he’s ready and willing to do it. He deserves a chance to right his wrongs after all.


End file.
